


Persephone's Folly

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark Character, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Present Tense, Revisionist Fairy Tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-04
Updated: 2012-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-30 14:07:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone was a fool to fear Hades.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persephone's Folly

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2009 as a gift for callistianstar, who gave me the prompt of _Persephone_. J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters; I am writing this story for fun and not profit. 
> 
> The paintings described in this fic are imaginary.

_Persephone’s Folly_

_This is the first panel of the painting that Draco gave to Harry:_

It shows a meadow in the full bloom of spring, red flowers gasping among the long green grasses, shadows smoldering under the assault of a golden sun, blue flowers draping over a long drop, a black gap cut in the earth. The hills swell like shoulders, the water in the background cries out to the light. Everything in the painting is brilliant; everything is reaching towards life. 

Nothing is more brilliant than the white flowers whisking downwards into the gap one by one, or the white dress of the young woman who has dropped them.

She falls back, one arm lifted above her head, her other hand outstretched as if she could hold back fate. Above her, in a chariot drawn by plunging horses the color of iron, the god Hades looms, reaching for her with his own undeniable hand. His second hand is spread wide, and six red seeds glitter in his hand.

Pomegranate seeds, the fruit of the underworld, enough to bind a body there for half a year, to save or damn a soul.

It is easy to see the terror in the posture of the maiden of spring, the way her arms forbid, the way her dress flutters in an unfelt wind caused by the stir of Hades’s passage. It is easy to think her fear is all that matters.

It is easy not to look into those large eyes—dark the artist painted them, dark as fertile soil—and as easy as breathing not to see the gleam of fugitive joy.

*

_This is the way that it is on the evening when Harry decides at last to go to him._

Draco meets his followers in the darkness, but not in a closed-in dungeon. The would-be new Dark Lord is not a traditionalist in many things, though he would probably claim he keeps the most important customs. 

Harry Apparates into the open air, on the edge of a cliff, near water. He can see and smell that much in his first moments here. He stands still for a few moments, both to confirm his choice and to let the others get used to the shock of his presence.

The air above him is thick with stars and a full moon. It would be _almost_ enough by itself to light the faces turning towards him in astonishment, but Harry is grateful for the fire in the middle of the gathering and the shine of _Lumos_ on multiple wands nevertheless.

“Harry.”

Draco speaks that one, assured word, stepping out from behind the fire. He wears a white cloak; his color is not black but white, the color of the killing snow. And yet, his eyes and cheeks and hair seem to have more shades than usual, the blue and red and white of a young god. 

Harry inclines his head, never taking his eyes from the still, calm face. He draws his wand.

Draco smiles. “Is that supposed to frighten me?”

His followers stir and mutter. Harry is the most skillful Auror in Britain, one of the most powerful wizards in the world, and they have to know that he has been assigned for the last six months solely to track rumors of the rising Dark Lord.

Harry looks at Draco, ignoring the people who cluster behind him as one ignores the stars beside the moon, and remembers.

*

_This is the second panel of the painting that Draco gave to Harry_ :

Persephone stands in a garden of ebony trees, her hair unbound and flowing behind her, a lovely dark mass. The curls and tendrils of it find their echo in the curls and tendrils of the trees’ branches, of their fragile leaves.

Those leaves are not alive, of course. They are too lovely to be alive.

The background is a delicate, smoldering grey, touched with red and silver, the colors of twilight. A black river runs in the background. The river seems to be on fire near the banks and swallowing up the light in the middle. This is the Styx, across which Charon carries the dead.

But Persephone did not enter this kingdom by boat, but by chariot.

And now she gazes at the six red seeds that shine on her palm, picking up an echo of the sunset burning, her eyes wide and round, her mouth wider and rounder still.

Her face is exquisite with fear, grey with it to answer the shifting melancholy of the sky behind her. Her fingers shimmer with the edge of a tremor as she gazes down at the food she will eat that will bind her to a double life forever, to sunlight and the spring, and to winter and the darkness.

Persephone’s mother Demeter will not forgive Hades. Even when Persephone returns to her for half the year, it will _be_ only half the year that sees Demeter bring forth the bounty of the earth in gladness; when Persephone descends, her mother’s grief withers the world and brings the cold hastening back.

She stands on the threshold of changing everything. 

She is afraid.

It is her only foolish moment in the painting.

*

_This is the way that it was when Harry first linked Draco to the source of the rumors_ :

A ring of bonfires surrounds the celebrating, half-drunk wizards and witches. Harry watches for long moments before he moves closer, even though he knows he has nothing to fear. He is sensitive to magic now, after handling it for so long—and ever since he died and came back to life again. He knows that no one present can challenge him in strength.

Save one.

Draco Malfoy turns towards him from the center of the ring, as if he heard some silent call.

Harry lowers his head and draws his wand. Malfoy threads his way towards him, not hurrying, stepping in and out among the fires as if he had all the time in the world. Harry tells himself to remember that the flames each mark an action of terrorism. Malfoy does not strike to kill, but to cripple. The Ministry’s supporters, the Aurors, the officials and political contacts and Wizengamot members that the business of lawmaking depends on—he maims them and throws them into fear.

Then Malfoy draws _his_ wand, and there is nothing in the world but the battle.

Harry will never know how to describe that experience to anyone else. They pivot through a world of light and darkness. The bonfires come to life and dance around them. The earth sprouts trees, which walk. Racing lights touch their skin and course on, swift as hounds hunting uncatchable prey. Water and fire leap, snarling, towards the designated target and fade away again as a magic precisely the equal of their master’s counters them. They are moving in a vast empty space walled with golden light, with fireworks that burst and spin apart and die. 

The only thing in the whole world that is real is Malfoy’s eyes.

They rise and they fall together, and Harry stands shaken on an earth that feels too small to hold him, the buzz of magic still playing along his skin. He stares at Malfoy, feeling as though his skull will grow past his face at any moment, and swallows.

Malfoy’s smile is wide and admiring.

“I cannot kill you, and you cannot kill me,” he says. “I cannot bear to destroy something so rare.”

His gaze is warm. Harry can feel it on him like a physical touch.

“If one of us surprised the other—” he says. His voice is ragged.

Malfoy laughs and bows to him. “I speak not of magical ability, but of _desire_ ,” he says, and then he cocks his head and raises a brow. “Or are you truly that ignorant of what hangs between us?”

Harry is not, not when he gives himself permission to think about it. It is like a cloud of drifting, invisible fire that awaits only that permission to ignite and become visible.

Malfoy reaches out a hand. Harry watches it coming for him as if he watched in a dream.

Malfoy caresses his arm. Their magic rises, and the two skeins of power entwine like the songs of a mated pair of phoenixes.

Harry moans and shakes. It is not just his erection; his whole body feels taut and stiff with the urge to _join_.

“Come to me,” Malfoy whispers. His voice is gold and light and fire and everything that Harry has ever loved. 

But he opens his eyes and shakes his head, because he has been told all his life that he has a duty and he should follow that duty first, and though it is almost more than he can think of or bear to give this up, he must. Everything that selfishly matters to him must be sacrificed.

“A fool,” Malfoy says, his voice rustling and rushing. “A very great fool.” He pauses, and then adds, “But not, I think, one for long.”

He turns away, and even the lines in his back speak poetry to Harry. He closes his eyes and Apparates, because there is nothing else he can do.

And he doesn’t tell anyone else who the new Dark Lord is, because there is nothing else he can do.

Fire burns along his skin, shimmers in his breath.

_But not, I think, one for long_.

*

_This is the third panel of the picture that Draco gave to Harry_ :

The branch of a tree runs along the upper part of the panel. It drops and curves into a shining arbor, silver and green, paler than any mortal tree and more beautiful. Drops of dew shimmer between the leaves.

Perhaps they are not dew. Perhaps they are cold tears.

Small steps run up to the arbor. A white pool flows from the steps. The pool reflects, in a misty, distorted way, the woman who stands on the second step up.

She is glorious.

Her dark hair drapes her like a pelt of sleek fur now, set free from fear and distraction. Her eyes are visible as green, to match the leaves of the tree about her, to match the grass of the meadow where she will never pick flowers in innocence again. Her hands cradle a bowl in front of her, a bowl as pale as her face.

The bowl contains six red pomegranate seeds. 

The shadows behind her hold two thrones. One is made of wood that seems to grow from the tree. The other is dark, an extension of the twilight from the previous panel, and a dark figure leans forwards from it, marked only by the shine of his eyes.

Dark or blue or grey, those eyes? Impossible to tell. The artist has touched them with a hue that does not seem to exist outside this painting. And he is not the focus of this picture; he is a fact of its existence, but not the center. The center is Persephone.

Persephone is wise now, as she was maiden-wise, though perhaps in a different manner. There is strength and contentment in her eyes, though perhaps buried deep beneath the calm surface.

There is, in the way her hands hold the bowl and her gaze invites the viewer in, a knowledge of power, and the bane and the blessing that goes with it.

*

_This is the way it was at last_ :

Harry lays his wand down at Draco’s feet.

The whispers of the crowd still in astonishment, then swell to a roar like pattering rain. Harry does not listen to them. He is looking at Draco. Draco’s eyes are wide with joy and acceptance, but no astonishment. He predicted this day would come, after all, and he is never surprised by his own predictions.

“It would be foolish to fear the descent,” Harry whispers.

They move at the same time, or at least that is how Harry remembers it. Hands gripping each other’s throats as if they would strangle one another, heads bent to the kiss but not bowed, tongues and teeth clicking and clashing and scattering sparks of the same elegant fire that dazzled Harry at their first meeting.

He remembers the fall into the mud, and the firm softness beneath his shoulders, and the shine of the moon overhead. But, better, he remembers the shine of Draco’s eyes, and the shedding of his robe, and the way his fingers rasp over skin that evokes Draco’s sigh.

A knee between his knees, a cock between his legs, a mouth on his throat.

The fire rises all around him and dances with him, and he dances with Draco there on the mud in full sight of his followers, between the darkness and the light, on the edge of the grass at the edge of the world, at the beginning of the descent.

_And_ , Harry thinks, as the world sheets into pleasure around him—selfish pleasure, tasted for the first time and so all the richer— _the rise_.

There will be a new Dark Lord. Draco has said he will change the wizarding world, tie people more firmly together and ensure that wizards need fear Muggles no longer and set magical creatures free from the outdated and outmoded strictures that bind them.

Harry wonders, as Draco shudders above him and gasps and he falls in love with the shape of his shoulders, what his friends will say when they hear of the one who fights at Draco’s side, not caring for his goals but protecting Draco from any harm that he might suffer in the advancement of them. 

Will they recognize the source of golden magic? Will they know the reason that the _one_ , pale and coldly shining like the moon, has transformed into _two_ , who shine like the sun and set all running before them like the wildfire? 

Draco opens his eyes and smiles. He reaches down to touch Harry’s cheek, magic whispering and surging along his fingers, shifting wildly from one moment to the next, changing the world with its sparks.

And Harry’s wonders and worries about the opinions of others join his fear in the abyss.

_The End._


End file.
